Kiss neutrality goodbye 2

Or more precisely, leave the issue in terms of forbiddance as a matter specific to simultaneous. Neutrality in consecutive, or more precisely in dialogic or multi-party interpreting is to be discussed in terms of required or allowed degree of interference. More on this later.

This issue of neutrality knocked my mind again while reading this article - Interpreter’s non-rendition behaviour and its effect on interaction: A case study of a multi-party interpreting situation - over the new online revue T&I.

I was a little bit puzzled by the situation described, a patented trained interpreter working in a company as a multitasking helper, interpreting being but of her apparent many chores.

I am quoting from the introduction:

"An interpreter is supposed to provide interpreting in another language after a
primary interlocutor utters something in one language. This paper attempts to
investigate what happens when interpreting is not provided by an interpreter
in a multi-party interpreting situation. There are occasions when an
interpreter does not or cannot render a message due to various reasons,
including when s/he does not understand the discourse of the previous
utterance/s."

I was glad and sad to read without surprise that " there is only
limited research to date that investigates interpreting in the business area."

This being said, our interpreting has difficulties interpreting. She lacks understanding of the context, what the authors strangely refer to "the
interpreter herself made an explicit comment on the difficulty of interpreting
this specific part because of the technical nature of the conversation. "

Sorry but it's not the technical nature of the conversation that makes interpreting difficult to deliver. It's the fact that the interpreter doesn't know what these people are talking about. This alone stresses something that sets me totally apart from considerations related to "an interpreter-mediated interaction, in particular, involving
complex multi-party business interpreting situations"

But anyway. Just pretend we are on the same bandwidth.

Analyzing the interaction at a point where the interpreter gets lost in translation and stalls, meaning, she does not interpret, the authors announce : "Within the interpreter-
mediated interaction frame, it may be considered appropriate to ask or clarify
any unknown concepts or words, but the interpreter in this instance did not initiate such an action.
"

I was floored by this "may" thing, but more on this later.

I was floored, not the least because it suggests that a trained interpreter is not trained to intervene, that is to break the myth of neutrality when critically needed, that is asking for clarification. What do they teach at interpreting school? The linguistic mantra and nothing else? They don't teach neutrality breaking management, how and when to intervene in the dynamic of multi-party interaction to take charge of the risk of loss of meaning, absence of interpretation, that is, blanks or air pockets, and the steer the dialogical motion clear from stalling. They don't because you discover that through experience, that not only neutrality does not apply in many situation of multi-party interaction, but that neutrality must be broken clean by the interpreter to save the interpreting dynamic. I think it should be part of the awareness given to students that in some circumstances, neutrality is the poison pill. And when being hired by A team to discuss with B team, A is required more than often to tell more to the A team things that are similar to on the spot consultation on communication matters, and suggestions to perform better. I have experienced such situation time and again. Why still chant the neutrality mantra when the issue at stake is interpreter's intervention self-management. So yes, kiss neutrality goodbye but let's talk instead about interference in the multi-party interaction situations.